Thomas Vaux
Thomas Vaux, 2nd Baron Vaux of Harrowden (25 April 1509George Edward Cokayne. The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, Vol. XII/2, p. 219-221. - October 1556) was an English poet. Life Vaux was the eldest son of Nicholas Vaux, first baron Vaux, by his second wife, Anne Green. He seems to have been educated at Cambridge, and on the death of his father in 1523 he succeeded to the barony. Although he had not completed his 13th year, he attended Cardinal Wolsey on his embassy to France in 1527, and in 1532 accompanied the king to Calais and Boulogne. He was first summoned to the House of Lords on 9 Jan. 1530–1.Lee, 194. Vaux married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Thomas Cheney, knt., of Irthlingborough. She was five years his junior. By her he had two sons — William and Nicholas — and two daughters: Anne, wife of Reginald Bray of Stene; and Maud, who died unmarried. Vaux belonged to the cultured circle of the courts of Henry VIII and Edward VI, and emulated the poetic efforts of Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder and the Earl of Surrey. His only public office seems to have been that of captain of the Isle of Jersey, which he surrendered in 1536. He was present at the disputation at Cambridge before Edward VI on 24 and 25 June 1549. He attended the House of Lords until 6 Dec. 1555. Dying in October 1556, he was buried apparently at Harrowden in Northamptonshire. Writing Such of his work as survives and has been identified consists of short lyrics. Most of it breathes an affected tone of melancholy which is unredeemed by genuine poetic feeling; but some of Vaux's poems show metrical facility and a gentle vein of commonplace reflection which caught the popular ear. Puttenham, in his Art of English Poesie (1589), noticed Vaux's poetic achievements, in close conjunction with those of Surrey and Wyatt, and carelessly gave Vaux the christian name of his father, Nicholas, thus causing some confusion between the two among biographers and historians of literature. Puttenham wrote (p. 76): "The Lord Vaux his commendation lyeth chiefly in the facillitie of his meetre, and the aptnesse of his descriptions such as he taketh upon him to make, namely in sundry of his songs, wherein he sheweth the counterfait action very lively and pleasantly." Elsewhere (p. 247) Puttenham described Vaux as ‘a noble gentleman’ who "much delighted in vulgar making" (i.e. vernacular poetry), but "a man otherwise of no great learning." The 2 poems by which Vaux is best known were 1st printed as the work of "an uncertain author" in 1557 in the Songes and Sonettes of Surrey, commonly quoted as Tottel's Miscellany. Both poems acquired a fresh vogue on being included in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. That entitled "The assault of Cupide upon the fort where the louers hart lay wounded, and how he was taken," was quoted by Puttenham, who first assigned it to Vaux, in the Arte of English Poesie (247), as an excellent specimen in English of "pragmatographia or counterfait action." It was widely imitated by Elizabethan poets. The 2nd of Vaux's poems that Tottel printed was called "The aged louer renounceth loue." George Gascoigne, in a prefatory epistle to his Posies (1575), refers to the poem as the work of Vaux, and says it "was thought by some to be made upon his deathbed," a notion which Gascoigne ridicules. An early manuscript version in the British Museum (Harl. MS. 1703, No. 25) is superscribed, "A dyttye or sonet made by the Lord Vaus, in the time of the noble Quene Marye, representing the image of Death." Other anonymous pieces ("by uncertain authors") in Tottel's Miscellany may well be by Vaux. A sonnet assigned by Tottel to Surrey ("The frailtie and hurtfulness of beautie," which begins "Brittle beautie, that nature made so fraile") is tentatively assigned to Vaux by Surrey's editor, Dr. Nott. 13 other pieces signed "Lord Vaux" appear in the popular poetic anthology entitled The Paradyse of daynty deuises, to which Richard Edwardes was the chief contributor. A 14th poem ("Being asked of the occasion of his white head") which bears Vaux's name in a later edition of the Paradyse is signed by William Hunnis in the first. A 15th piece in the Paradyse, signed "E. S." (No. 33 in 1576 edition), "Of sufferance cometh ease," is assigned to Vaux by Collier.Lee, 196. The Paradyse was first issued in 1576, and subsequently passed through many editions; it was reprinted in Brydges' British Bibliographer (vol. iv.) and in J.P. Collier's Poetical Miscellanies. Four of the best of Vaux's authentic contributions to the Paradyse’ entitled respectively "Being disdained he complaineth," "Of the mean estate," "Of a contented mind," and "Of the instability of youth," are printed in Hannah's Poems of Raleigh and other courtly Poets (1885, pp. 128–34). Recognition Vaux was created a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Anne Boleyn in May 1533. Vaux's ballad "The Aged Lover Renounces Love," (also known by its first line, "I loathe that I did love") was highly popular; it appeared as a broadside ballad, was set to music, and was quoted by Shakespeare (who with intentional inaccuracy used three stanzas in the first grave-digger's song in Hamlet, V.i.69) ff.) and Goethe (who used two stanzas in II Faust, V.vi).Notes to Thomas Lord Vaux, "The Aged Lover Renounceth Love," Representative Poetry Online, University of Toronto, UToronto.ca, Web, Dec. 24, 2011. All Vaux's undoubted contributions to the Paradyse and to Tottel's Miscellany — 15 pieces in all — are included in Dr. Grosart's ‘Fuller Worthies' Library Miscellanies,’ 1872, vol. iv. Sketches of Vaux and his wife by Hans Holbein the Younger are at Windsor, and a finished portrait of Lady Vaux is at Hampton Court. Publications *"The Poems of Thomas, Lord Vaux; Edward, Earl of Oxford; Robert, Earl of Essex; and Walter, Earl of Essex: For the first time collected," in Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies' Library: Volume IV (edited by Alexander Balloch Grosart). Blackburn, Lancashire, UK: privately publishd (Fuller Worthies' Library), 1872. *''The Poems of Lord Vaux'' (edited by Larry P. Vonalt). Denver, CO: Alan Swallow, 1960. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au: Thomas Vaux, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Sep. 3, 2016. See also *Canons of Elizabethan poetry *List of British poets References * . Wikisource, Web, Sep. 3, 2016. Notes External links ;Poems * Thomas, Lord Vaux 1509-1556 at the Poetry Foundation * Selected Poetry of Thomas Lord Vaux (1509-1556) at Representative Poetry Online *Index entry for Thomas, Lord Vaux at Poets' Corner *Thomas Lord Vaux at PoemHunter (3 poems) *Thomas Vaux at Poetry Nook (3 poems) ;About *Thomas Vaux, 2nd Baron Vaux in the Encyclopædia Britannica * Thomas lord Vaux in the Cambridge History of English and American Literature. * Original article is at Thomas Vaux, 2nd baron Vaux of Harrowden. * Vaux, Thomas Category:1510 births Category:1556 deaths Category:English poets Category:Barons in the Peerage of England Category:Governors of Jersey Category:Knights of the Bath Category:Portrait by Hans Holbein the younger Category:16th-century English people Category:People of the Tudor period Category:16th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets